Elizabeth Weise in USA Today doesn’t really answer the who-should-pay question, but does ask, what if it were possible to almost entirely do away with E. coli in ground beef and it would cost only about a penny a burger?

Food-safety experts say it's entirely feasible with new technologies that have become available. One is a vaccine, the other a feed additive, which, given early enough, could bring down potential E. coli contamination to negligible levels.

The problem, experts in beef safety say, is that the economics are backward. The new interventions have to be administered long before the cattle are slaughtered, when the calves are young or in feedlots where they're growing.

It's hard to figure out who should pay for steps that would take place months and possibly years before the grill starts sizzling. The people who'd have to pay for them aren't the ones who would reap the direct benefits.’’’

These interventions aren't perfect, but they're very good, says Guy Loneragan, a professor of food safety at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. "The question is no longer, 'Can we get the technologies?' We've got them, or they're soon to arrive. The question is 'How do we implement?' "

So far only two small companies appear to be embracing them. One is a tiny feed lot cooperative in Kansas that's looking to vaccinate all its cattle "soon." The other is a Meade, Kan., cooperative that's staking its economic life on calling for retailers nationally to demand these interventions from the packers that supply their meat.

The regulatory landscape "is confusing," says Elisabeth Hagen, USDA's undersecretary for food safety. "But we're realizing that there's an issue here and somehow we have to bring everybody together and focus on the end product, the result of which is the safety of the food that goes to the American consumer."

Loneragan says they've gone as far as they can after the animal is slaughtered. Now the focus needs to be on ridding the animals of E. coli O157:H7 before they get to the slaughterhouse. The new methods to do that involve:

•A vaccine. The biggest and potentially most game-changing treatment is a vaccine introduced by Pfizer Animal Health in 2010 and given in a three-shot series starting when the calf is just 6 months old. This gets rid of the E. coli O157:H7 bacteria in 85% of the cattle, says Brad Morgan, a senior food-safety specialist at Pfizer Animal Health in Stillwater, Okla. Not only that, but even among the ones that still have the bacteria in the gut, the injections reduce the amount the animals shed in their manure by 98%, he says.

It's not all or nothing. Pfizer has done studies showing that if only 50% or even 25% of cattle are vaccinated, rates of E. coli are strongly reduced in the feed yard, and therefore in the packing plant. And Harvard's Hammitt says his research shows that Americans understand that food can't be "perfectly safe," but they want safer.

The vaccine costs $4 to $6 per animal for the full series, says Loneragan. There are several other vaccines in the regulatory pipeline here and overseas.

•The probiotic. The other intervention is a probiotic added to feed. These are beneficial bacteria cultures that out-compete the more dangerous forms of E. coli in the cattles' guts, much as yogurt is said to seed the gut with good bacteria to keep out the bad. Many studies have found that using "the right strain at the right dose you can get a fairly predictable 40% to 50% reduction in E. coli O157:H7," says Loneragan.

The American Meat Institute Foundation, the research arm of the meat industry trade group, says there just isn't enough data yet to know if these treatments work. While there's been a tremendous amount of research and it looks promising, "We're right at the cusp of understanding the technology," says Betsy Booren, the institute's director of scientific affairs.

Last year Cargill, one of the nation's largest beef producers, conducted a trial of the E. coli vaccine on 85,000 head of cattle at its Fort Morgan, Colo., beef-processing facility, says spokesman Mike Martin at Cargill's Wichita headquarters.

The trial's results were "inconclusive," Martin says, in part because the levels of O157:H7 they found on the cattle in general "were the lowest in years . …" There was "very little difference" in rates between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated cattle, he says.

Loneragan says in the studies he's done, E. coli O157:H7 levels were indeed low but dropped lower in meat from vaccinated cattle.

In the end, it's going to take movement by the biggest companies to move the industry. There are two that could make this happen in a second, McDonald's and Wal-Mart, says Chuck Jolley, a meat industry marketing company executive.

"If either decides to require it, the industry will turn around on a dime," he says.

A colleague sent me these pictures of fish seasoning purchased in a San Francisco Asian supermarket. The back mentions both HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) and ISO 9001, but doesn’t say what either mean.

In Brisbane, we bought a pint of fresh strawberries from Gowinta Farms, which bills itself as the largest strawberry farm on the sunshine coast, featuring a café, fruit shop, packhouse, transportation and a workshop.

And you can see from the plastic container, it’s all HACCP-certified.

I’m not sure what that means, or if consumers know what it means, but these are further indications of baby-steps to start promoting microbial food safety directly to consumers.
 

I’m all for marketing microbial food safety at retail – directly to consumers – but only if the claims can be backed up with actions and data.

Schnuck Markets is expanding its so-called “Peace of Mind” initiative from pricing to quality assurance with a new website, www.peaceofmindquality.com, that emphasizes the chain’s dedication to quality and food safety.

Supermarket News cites one example on the website, a statement by Schnucks that “it intentionally applies shorter sell-by dates on meats and deli products to ensure products are fresher and last longer once purchased.”

“Through 'Peace of Mind,’ you will have complete confidence that our foods are of the highest quality,” Schnucks writes on the website.

Quality and safety are seemingly used interchangeably on the website when they are actually two different concepts. The only evidence of food safety I saw on the website was that the company won some big-time award from the International Association for Food Protection in 2009.

I’m all for marketing food safety and providing comprehensive explanations of the food safety efforts of everyone in the farm-to-fork food safety chain, even the provision of testing data; some U.S. slaughterhouses are now doing this. Schnucks is going the right way, but it can be a lot better.

The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission is pondering a request from Svente Lind of Sweda Farms Ltd. for a full-scale inquiry into the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board and province’s dominant egg-grading companies.

And in the Superior Court, L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. has filed more than 200 pages of documents as it seeks to squelch whistle-blower Norman Bourdeau who has a treasure trove of electronic documents detailing the company’s activities.

Included are thousands of e-mails among senior staff, some of them revealing that company owner William Gray instructed employees to falsify grading and to hide damning evidence.

The information indicates that L.H. Gray Ltd. systematically altered automatic grading equipment with the result that cracks and dirty eggs were marketed as Grade A.

The court documents indicate that Bourdeau warned that this:
- Cheated consumers who paid Grade A prices for inferior-quality eggs. Bourdreau estimates consumers were over-charged $25 to $30 million per year for a number of years.
- Violated food safety standards through the marketing of cracks and dirty eggs instead of diverting them to processors.

The court documents also indicate that L.H. Gray Ltd. denies all of the allegations of wrong-doing and is suing Bourdeau for damaging the company’s reputation. Bourdeau is countersuing.

Gray’s application for an injunction to muzzle Bourdeau is to be heard in Superior Court here Feb. 22. Until then, the documents filed by the company are open to the public.

Sweda Farms has filed an application in Superior Court in Whitby to have the electronic files Bourdeau copied from L.H. Gray Ltd., and stashed in a safety deposit box, turned over to help it pursue lawsuits against Egg Farmers of Ontario, L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. and Burnbrae Farms Ltd. There’s an estimate that the electronic files contain more than one million documents.

Gray has 40 to 42 per cent of the Ontario market and Burnbrae, controlled by Joe Hudson and his family, has even more. Gray has 30 to 35 per cent of the Canada-wide egg market, some of it through outright and partial ownership of egg-processing plants.

The Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board examined Svente Lind’s egg-grading operations and calculated that he had a higher percentage of cracks and dirty eggs than the provincial average. On that basis, the board claimed it was owed almost $45,000 in levies and that producers were shorted.

Sweda will now argue that the provincial averages are wrong because L.H. Gray Ltd. failed to properly report the grade of its eggs. The inference is that something similar happened at Burnbrae.

Bourdeau also alleges that Harry Pelissero, general manager of the Ontario egg board, colluded with Gray and Burnbrae to the detriment of competitors, such as Sweda, and the marketplace.

Egg board directors are also involved. The documents indicate that board chair Carolynn Griffith was paid for 8.8 per cent more Grade A eggs than her farm actually shipped to L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. Similar gaps “between actual and reported grade” were 6.8 per cent for Roger Pelissero, Harry’s brother who was recently elected a board director, Victor Slobodian, 5.88 per cent, and Murray Delouw, 4.18 per cent.

As examples, the court documents list the discrepancies for 19 producers. It’s not clear whether the producers were aware that they were being paid for more Grade A eggs than qualified.

The documents include e-mails from William Gray indicating that he kept a close watch on grading percentages, instructed staff to achieve certain percentages for Grade As and to hide evidence of the deceit involved.

One exchange between Gray and Scott Brookshaw says “I didn’t want anything in regards to the crack detector documented.”

There is an exchange of e-mails between Gray and Pelissero outlining their intentions to thwart an application for a supplementary import permit for organic eggs. Gray expresses concern that if this permit is granted, it may develop into larger-scale imports.

Pelissero’s role is to find Ontario-produced eggs to fill the permit-applicants’ needs.

This appears to be part of a pattern of collusion to thwart applications for supplementary import permits other than those sought by Gray and Burnbrae. In one case, a request for small eggs is filled with Ontario-produced medium-grade eggs falsely graded as smalls.

Sweda complained that many of the eggs from Burnbrae and Gray, supplied to thwart applications for supplementary import permits, were inferior quality. In response, Pellisero arranged to provide clean plywood to line one of Gray’s trucks and to have Gray take special care to deliver top-quality eggs to Sweda.

The documents indicate that Bourdeau alleged a conflict of interest by Mary Jean McFaul, daughter of Joe Hudson, a senior officer of Burnbrae and simultaneously a director of Egg Farmers of Ontario.

The documents include a resignation letter from board director Bryan Durst on Nov. 8, 2009, saying Pelissero has an “impulsive nature” that “makes it necessary that he be kept on a tight reign” and that board chair Griffith was quick to defend producers and supply management, but not to keep tabs on board operations.

Bourdeau has gone to the Strathroy Police, to the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, to Egg Farmers of Canada and to the Canadian Egg and Poultry Processors Council in his attempts to end what he deems to be huge scandals that undermine the supply management system.

He declined to comment to a reporter.